The Senate has failed and the possibility that we’ll be stuck with Obamacare forever is a very real one.

After realizing that he had no path to passing the Senate version of “repeal and replace,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has turned to a repeal with a 2-year window to come up with a replacement plan.

“Regretfully, it is not apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure Obamacare will not be successful. So, in the coming days, the Senate will vote to take up the House bill with the first amendment in order being what a majority of the Senate already supported in 2015 and that was vetoed by then-President Obama: a repeal of Obamacare with a two-year delay to provide for a state transition period to a patient-centered health care system that gives Americans access to quality, affordable care.”

This is a move endorsed by both President Trump and some conservatives in Congress who have been calling for a simple repeal during the entire healthcare debate. In fact, President Trump followed up his call for a simple repeal by giving the Congressional GOP some advice on how to get it done.

Republicans should just REPEAL failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan that will start from a clean slate. Dems will join in!

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) echoed the President’s sentiments and reminded his Twitter followers that he and the President have made these comments before, weeks ago when things first started to look bleak for the Senate bill.

Sadly, this isn’t a “simple” repeal. If the Senate cannot come together on a replacement within the next two years, then the House bill would become the new healthcare law of the land. As Ed Morrissey at HotAir explains:

It appears that McConnell wants the AHCA as the default replacement in case Congress can’t do any better in the next two years. Why take up the House bill at all? Senate Republicans rejected it outright as soon as it passed, believing that they could come together on a more inclusive comprehensive plan. Donald Trump wants a straight repeal, but that’s not going to work:

Without attaching the House bill to a repeal, however, McConnell would not be able to qualify the bill for reconciliation and would need 60 votes for repeal. The American Health Care Act’s CBO score allows the whole bill to pass with 51 votes rather than the supermajority McConnell will never get. Presumably, the flat-out repeal along with a two-year delay with the AHCA as the fallback replacement will allow conservatives and moderates to agree to a game of Kick the Can.

The Senate GOP won’t have the 60 votes needed to just “repeal” Obamacare, so they’ll need to use the House version that: a) they don’t like and b) some House members don’t like if they have any hope to repeal. The Senate GOP doesn’t just “not like” the House version of the bill, they hate it. The moderates, like Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) who we all cheered to victory in hopes that she would help us repeal Obamacare have even already announced that they can’t support it. Over in the House, many GOP moderates voted for the House version of the bill ONLY because they hoped that the Senate version would be better and would eventually replace the House version.

This is the problem for the GOP. Unlike the Democrats who only want to move the goalposts LEFT and will come together on any bill that does so… even when they don’t think it goes far enough or if they think it goes too far, the GOP has a split team. Some in the GOP want to shift things to the RIGHT, others in the GOP want to maintain the status quo, and others in the GOP want to move some things to the right and other things to the left. This schizophrenic philosophy (mostly from the moderate GOP) means that major legislation like this is all but impossible for the GOP to craft. Meanwhile, the Democrats can simply throw any leftist plan against the wall and they will all vote for it (which is how we got stuck with the train-wreck that is Obamacare).

But on Obamacare, every GOP legislator that votes against a full repeal should be ashamed of themselves because they ALL campaigned on doing so. Now we have moderates, like the aforementioned Capito, who campaigned on repeal saying things like “I won’t vote for something that hurts my constituents.” As if this will absolve them of the guilt of their lies. Repealing Obamacare would hurt NO ONE. It will allow the market to drive costs down, it will mean more access to more healthcare options, and it will mean more freedom for Americans and a smaller federal government. If the moderates in the legislature refuse to repeal Obamacare, we (the voters) better make them pay for it during the primary season.

Onan is a graduate of Liberty University (2003) and earned his M.Ed. at Western Governors University in 2012. Onan lives in the Atlanta area with his wife, Leah. They have three children and enjoy the hectic pace of life in a young family. Onan and Leah are members of the Journey Church in Hiram, GA. He is also the chief editor at EagleRising.

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